“Scylla! Did you open the pinot gris?” Mildred snapped testily. “I said grigio, not gris. Pinot grigio. It’s an entirely different grape.”
“My mistake,” Daphne-as-Scylla answered calmly. She knew the difference between the two wines, and had done it on purpose. She couldn’t resist baiting Mildred. “Shall I open the grigio?”
“No, this will do,” Mildred said dismissively. “Go stand over there somewhere. I can’t bear how you loom over me all the time.”
Daphne went and stood up against the wall. Mildred could growl all she wanted, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. She was useless now that Creon was dead. She had no Scion child to give her any say among the Hundred, and if she didn’t have another child by Tantalus she would remain powerless—no more than a forgettable footnote in the long history of the House of Thebes. Mildred was an ambitious woman, and Daphne trusted that she would try to get pregnant again soon. That required the presence of her husband.
If there were any other way to find Tantalus again, Daphne would have gladly taken it, but infiltrating Conclave as Mildred’s bodyguard killed two birds with one stone. Daphne needed to be present in case there was anything she could do to help Castor and Pallas in their attempt to get Automedon away from her daughter.
Castor and Pallas didn’t know she was there, of course, or that Hector was staying a few nights a week in one of Daphne’s safe houses in lower Manhattan, but that didn’t matter. Free of the Furies for over a decade now, and capable of wearing any woman’s face she needed to, Daphne had always been able to sway the other Houses from the inside to accomplish her goals. Once Castor and Pallas got Automedon’s boot off her daughter’s throat, Daphne would finally be able to kill Tantalus.
Mildred’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and then answered it hastily.
“Tantalus. Did you get my recordings?” Mildred said in a slightly higher than usual voice.
She had been sending recordings of the daily meetings to Tantalus, and even though phone calls were forbidden, he would call with detailed instructions for her every night. Daphne could hear both ends of their nightly conversations because Tantalus had to speak loud enough for his human wife to hear, which was loud enough for any Scion to overhear, even from the other side of the room. As yet, Tantalus hadn’t revealed his location to his wife, and she hadn’t asked. Apparently, neither of them trusted anyone with that information, not even Mildred’s bodyguard.
“I did,” he replied coldly. Daphne imagined herself digitized so she could dive through Mildred’s phone and jump out of Tantalus’s—her hands re-forming solid out of ones and zeros to choke him. “They still call me Outcast. You were supposed to fix that.”
“How? The Hundred won’t listen to me anymore. Everyone listens to Castor now, and since he found out you’re an Outcast he’s been saying it openly. You’ve lost a lot of support,” she replied in a clipped, accusing voice. “And there’s nothing I can do about that, as things are.”
“Not this again,” he sighed. “Our son hasn’t been dead a month and already you want to replace him.”
A long, uncomfortable silence followed.
“Automedon has been slow to respond to my calls,” Tantalus said tersely, breaking the chilly stalemate. “And when he does, he always has a less than satisfying excuse.”
“No,” Mildred said, half rising out of her seat. “What does this mean?”
Daphne had to work to keep her face impassive. Myrmidons were the consummate soldiers. They never ignored their masters.
“I’m not sure,” Tantalus sighed. “It could be nothing, or it could be that he’s working for someone else. Maybe he was already pledged to another master before I hired him. Either way, I don’t think I control him anymore, and if that’s so I can’t stop him from killing Helen if that’s what his other master wants. This cannot happen, or I’m a dead man. Daphne has pledged herself . . .”
“Must you always find a way to bring her up?” Mildred said, a bitter sneer curling her lip. “Do you do it just to say her name?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, wife,” Tantalus warned, his tone grim. “Or I won’t be alive long enough to give you the Scion baby you need to get your throne back.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Halloween morning was overcast and gloomy, just like it should be. The menacing storm clouds overhead added just the right shade of pearl gray to the air, making the autumn colors pop like smears of oil paint on a perfectly primed canvass. It was cold out. Not so cold that being outdoors was intolerable, but just cold enough to make everyone want soup for lunch and candy for dinner.
Helen sent the Greek Geeks a mass text, telling them that Hades had agreed to let her back into the Underworld and that she was out of danger. She didn’t mention Lucas’s obol and she didn’t give any of the details of her meeting with Morpheus. She wanted to let Lucas decide what they were going to tell the family.
She got a few texts back, asking her to explain how she managed to descend after being banished, but she ignored them and posed a question of her own. She wanted to know where the Shadowmaster talent came from.
It developed in the medieval times, and it’s been a part of the House of Thebes ever since, Cassandra replied.
That meant the talent was only about a thousand years old. A thousand years was a long time, but not to Scions who traced their ancestors back almost four times as long as that. Okay. But where’d it come from? Helen persisted.
No one had an answer.
Helen dressed and got ready for school, then went downstairs to cook breakfast for her father, the witch. Having spent the previous day in a dress, Jerry had quickly learned that the only shame in his costume was that it wasn’t elaborate enough. After fielding multiple suggestions from customers for how he could improve his holiday spirit, he had decided to pull out all the stops. He had added a corset to the dress, and wore blue lipstick, clip-on earrings, and pointy-toed boots to add some extra oomph.
“Dad. I think you and I need to have a little chat about your cross-dressing,” Helen said in a mock-serious tone as she poured some coffee. “Just because all the other kids are doing it . . .”
“I know, I know,” he said, grinning into his bacon. “I just can’t get beat by Mr. Tanis at the hardware store. He’s a pirate this year, and you should see his wig! He must have spent a fortune on it! And don’t even get me started on the movie theater around the corner. They’re handing out thirty bags of candied popcorn for one of the night showings. Kate’s is much better, of course, but we have to charge.”
Helen ate her pumpkin pancakes—the last batch of the year—and sipped her coffee, listening to her father complain, even though she knew he was loving every minute of it. She felt almost good. Her head wasn’t throbbing, her eyes weren’t watering, and for the first time in weeks she wasn’t sore all over. While she wasn’t exactly happy, she did feel a sense of peace.
This feeling was partly to do with the fact that Helen was convinced there was another presence in the room. It didn’t scare her or freak her out anymore. In fact, it soothed her. She had forgotten to ask Morpheus if he was the “invisible sun” she had been feeling, but the last time she’d felt this presence she had also heard his voice, so who else could it be?
“Helen?” Jerry said, looking at her expectantly.
“Yeah, Dad?” She’d spaced out again.
“Can you work at the store after school today?” he asked again. “It’s okay if you can’t, it’s just that Luis really wanted to take Juan and little Marivi trick-or-treating. It’ll be her first time . . .”
“Sure! No problem!” Helen replied guiltily. “Tell Luis to have fun with his kids. I’ll be there.”
She had been daydreaming about Morpheus. Or was she just thinking about him as Lucas . . . or Orion? Her cheeks throbbed with a blush, and she stood up abruptly and started to gather her things for school.
“Are you sure you feel better?” Jerry asked doubtfully as he watched her stuff books
in a bag and check her phone. Claire had left her a text.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Helen replied distractedly, reading. Claire wasn’t coming to get her, as she’d been roped into going to school early to decorate for Halloween. “Damn it. I’ll have to take my stupid bike.” Helen moaned as she did an about-face and headed for the back door.
“Are you sure you can—”
“Yes! I’ll be there,” Helen cut him off peevishly. She reluctantly wheeled her ancient rig out of the garage, noticing that it had grown more rust over the past month than was scientifically possible.
“Have a good day,” her father called after her.
Helen rolled her eyes, thinking yeah, right, and pedaled off. She wasn’t more than a block away from school when she was nearly run off the road by a speeding driver. She had to veer off the shoulder, bump across the unpaved ground, and splash through the grandmother of all muddy puddles to avoid getting hit.
Great gouts of oily, turgid water splashed up onto her legs and soaked her from the waist down. Helen hit the brakes, and had to take a moment to let the catastrophe sink in, stunned that so much freezing-cold yuck had spewed all over her.
She looked back at the puddle. There was a dead animal floating in it. She smelled her clothes, and sure enough, they smelled vaguely of putrefying squirrel.
“Unbelievable,” Helen mumbled to herself. She wasn’t usually a clumsy person, at least not when she had a full night of dreaming behind her, and she couldn’t believe this had happened.
She read the time on her phone, and saw that she couldn’t go home and change. If she did, she’d get a detention from Hergie for being late for sure, and she had already promised that she would work for Luis right after school. Helen decided that spending a day smelling like dead squirrel was better than spending the rest of her life knowing she had robbed two impressionable children of their father on Halloween. Besides, she really liked Luis’s kids. They were so tiny, and Juan had the most adorable husky, little-boy voice.
Sighing at her rotten luck, Helen got ready to pedal to school, only to find that she couldn’t. Her front tire had gone flat. She swung her leg over to get off her bike, and heard a ripping noise.
Somehow, the hem of her jeans had gotten caught in the chain and she had nearly ripped the whole leg off. Readjusting her stance to stop herself before she could tear her jeans any more, Helen slid on some pebbles underfoot and fell headlong into the muddy, dead-rodent-infested puddle, with her ancient bicycle still attached to her pant leg. The bike collapsed on top of her before she could stand, the frame getting twisted and bent as it tangled with Helen’s strong body.
“What the hell is going on?” Helen yelled aloud. She heard a tittering laugh and looked across the road to see a tall, thin woman grinning at her.
Right away, Helen knew there was something not quite right about the woman. She had high, arching cheekbones and wave after wave of long, white-blonde hair that reached the back of her knees. At first Helen thought she was a movie star or something, because with her features and all that hair she should have been beautiful. But the sneer on her lips and the hollow, serpentine look in her eyes made her downright ugly. No matter how beautiful her body was supposed to be, her polluted spirit made her hideous to look at.
“What are you?” Helen shouted. Goose bumps puckered her skin, more in reaction to the uncanny encounter than to the cold.
The ghoulish woman shook her head at Helen, waggling it forward left to right, like a cobra blankly zeroing in on a hapless mouse. Then she broke eye contact and skipped off. Helen stared after her in shock, thinking to herself, Who the hell skips?
Very carefully, in case there also happened to be a bear trap she was about to step in or something, Helen pulled herself up from the nasty-ass puddle and sat down next to her trashed bike. She knew that what she had just seen was no costume, and that her little run-in with Murphy’s Law was not a coincidence. Something strange had just happened, but she had no idea what.
Picking up her demolished bike and putting it over her shoulder, Helen walked the rest of the way to school. She dumped her ex-bike somewhere in the vicinity of the rack and wandered into homeroom exactly as disgusting and torn up as the puddle had left her.
There were a bunch of people wearing costumes, and more than one wearing ripped clothes and fake-dirt makeup. Even so, it was obvious that Helen was soaking wet, shivering, and covered in real mud. Looks of shock followed her as she walked across the classroom. Matt and Claire sat up straighter in alarm. She mouthed the words “I’m okay,” and Matt sat back in his seat, less alarmed but still scowling, wondering what had happened.
“Miss Hamilton? Am I to assume that the malodorous emanation I detect is an integral part of your Halloween costume?” Hergie asked with his usual nonchalance. “Something of the zombie persuasion, I expect?”
“I’m thinking of calling it ‘eau de dead fart,’” she replied, just as cool as he was. Usually Helen was much more respectful, but she felt like pushing Hergie a bit.
“Please visit the powder room and remove it. Although I commend your holiday spirit, I cannot allow such a distraction. There are some students at this institution who wish to learn,” he chastised in his heroic way. Helen grinned at him. Hergie really was one of a kind. “I shall write you a hall pass. . . .”
“But, Mr. Hergesheimer, I don’t have a change of clothes. I’ll need help . . .”
“I would expect nothing else. One pass for you, and one for your cohort, Miss Aoki.” He tore off two precious slips of paper that pretty much gave Helen and Claire free rein over the hallways for the next two periods.
Claire looked over at Helen excitedly, trying not to scream out of her eyeballs, and the two best friends stood up from their desks and took their passes with humbly bent heads. Getting a hall pass from Hergie was like getting a knighthood. It didn’t make you any richer, but it gave you bragging rights for the rest of the year.
“Lennie, you stink,” Claire mumbled as they made their way to the door.
“You have no idea what just happened to me,” Helen whispered back, and went on to explain her entire run in with the ghoulish woman by the side of the road. Claire listened intently as she led them to the theater. “Wait, why are we here?” Helen asked when she saw their destination.
“You need something to wear,” Claire said with a shrug as she let them into the prop room. She went directly to a rack of diaphanous, glittery fairy costumes and began holding one after another up to Helen, comparing size. “Are you sure it wasn’t just some crazy tourist in a Halloween costume? This’ll fit you. It’s got wings, though.”
“I’m cool with wings. And there is no way that woman was human. She was, like, seven feet tall and she skipped,” Helen replied, easily shifting conversational gears. “Won’t we get in trouble?”
“I’m on the costume committee. Besides, we’ll give them back.” Claire gave Helen an impish grin as she took one for herself. “Now, locker room. You’re unholy stench is making my eyes water.”
Helen showered and washed her hair while Claire changed into a pilfered costume of her own and stood at one of the mirrors putting on sparkly makeup to go with it. Claire asked Helen to describe the ghoul very carefully, but she couldn’t add much beyond her original first impression.
“It was difficult to get a good look at her, Gig. I was busy doing the breaststroke in a puddle with a dead rodent floating next to me.” Helen toweled herself dry and wiggled into an iridescent wisp of a dress while trying not to poke her eyes out on the spiky wings.
“I’ll tell Matt and Ari about it in class today, see if they have any ideas. Now come out and let me see!”
“Which characters from Midsummer are we supposed to be?” Helen’s jaw dropped when she saw Claire’s costume. “Ooh, I love that! The spiderweb design is amazing!”
“I’m Cobweb, obviously, and you’re Moth. They’re good, right? My grandma did the sequin bits.”
“These wings are insane pr
etty.” Helen floated up into the air and pretended to be surprised that she was flying. “And they work, too!”
Claire grabbed Helen’s foot and tugged her back down to earth with a sulky face. “Jason made me promise never to fly with you again. And now that I know what I’m missing, it sucks even harder to watch you do it.”
“I’ll have a talk with him,” Helen offered. “Maybe if I show him how easy it is for me to carry a passenger, he’ll see it’s not so dangerous and change his mind.”
“I doubt it,” Claire said. She shook her head and scowled. “Not that it matters. I think today we’re technically broken up, but how would I know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Helen asked, jabbing a fist onto her hip and frowning.
“It means that one second he’s telling me that he can’t see me anymore, and the next he’s outrunning my car and begging me to come back. Then ten minutes later, he’s dumping me again.”
“Last night?” Helen guessed.
“Then, just as I was storming off, he kissed me.” She sighed and clenched her fists in exasperation. “Jason keeps doing this to me. I think it’s making me a little crazy.”
Claire dismissed her confused thoughts with a wave of her hand, grabbed Helen by the shoulder, and started nudging her over to the hand dryer. She pressed the button on the hand dryer and made Helen lean her head over the nozzle, drowning out Helen’s attempt to ask more questions about Jason. Helen took the hint that Claire didn’t want to talk about it and let her angry friend “style” her hair.
The result was a crazy, teased bouffant that Claire insisted on coating with gold-sparkle hairspray. Helen usually would have said no to all that glitter, but she had to admit it kind of worked with the costume. And besides, it was Halloween.